Here it is: The first ever copy of Good Dog, Bad Zombie. (Video and photos!)

Brian here. Winter is settling in, but we’re revving up with Good Dog, Bad Zombie! We are working around the clock to get you this game, and we’ve got some exciting things to share. The base game and two expansions (Weird Smells and Unlikely Allies) have all gone to print. And with that...

The advance copies have arrived!

The first two ever copies of Good Dog, Bad Zombie arrived at my place early last week. We at Make Big Things couldn’t be happier! We have a fantastic relationship with our manufacturer, Community Printers in California. I’m on Skype with them multiple times a day, as they work with us on every detail of the game. It’s hard to express how appreciative we are for everything they’ve done to make this game possible. I happened to be speaking to our account representative, Ross, when the advance copies of the game arrived. So I made an unboxing video of me seeing the game for the first time with Ross on Skype!

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We unbox the first copies of Good Dog, Bad Zombie! Length - 5 minutes.

Can you tell I was excited? And I hope you are too. It’s thanks to all of you amazing backers that this game is now real!

And here is a picture of the game:

GDBZ in all its glory!

Here's a close up!

Since these arrived, Community Printers has started assembling the remaining 4,998 copies! Woof!

Shipping Timelines Update - Mostly On Track!

I want to take a second to give a shout out to the whole team at Make Big Things. I’ve been working with Hannah and Evan—as well as our collaborators Josh (editor), Fox (illustrator), and Ross (manufacturer)—non-stop to get Good Dog, Bad Zombie out the door. The dedication, care, effort, time, and hard work everyone has been pouring into this project is absolutely incredible. With every challenge or obstacle that’s presented itself, the Make Big Things team has rallied relentlessly to bring everything together. It’s been incredible to see and be a part of. It brings us such joy that this game is now almost out of our paws and into yours.

So we’re excited to tell you that’s about to happen! Here’s our shipping timeline:

The base games and expansion packs will ship from Community Printers in mid-November (that’s soon!) to our distribution warehouse.

The games and expansions will arrive to our distribution warehouse by or before December 1st. Our distributor will begin to immediately turn the games around, shipping the games out in the first week of December.

Obviously, packages can get lost, or delayed, or sent to the wrong address, or eaten by a roaming zombie. When you ship out nearly 2,500 packages at once, there’s bound to be a couple of hiccups. But as of now, we are on track to deliver the base game and expansions to people in the US and Canada before the holidays! Which is so, so exciting!

For people outside of the US and Canada, things are a little trickier. There’s just far more variables. When you factor in shipping over the ocean, dealing with customs and imports, and so on—there’s a lot of things that can happen that can unexpectedly delay shipments. While we’re on track to ship them as well, we want to be forthright and say there are so many factors outside of our control with shipping things when they go over the ocean, and unexpected things can sometimes crop up that cause delivery delays. If that happens, we will let you know!

As we discussed in our previous update, we’re also currently working on all the custom play as your own dog characters ($75 backers and above). It’s our goal to get these to you by the holidays, but there’s the possibility that this part of the project falls a little behind schedule, even though we’re working our tails off on it. We should know for sure in another week or two. We have worked really hard, however, to make sure that this will not affect the delivery of the base game and expansions to anyone, as we will plan on shipping the custom dogs to you separately. This way, if there is a delay on the custom dog end of the project, it won’t impact anything else. For those of you who plan on giving Good Dog, Bad Zombie with the custom dogs as holiday gifts, if we don’t ship the custom dogs in time for the holidays, we’re working on a back up plan to provide you with something that you can use to show your giftees that they’ll be getting custom dogs soon! We really appreciated the comments and messages of understanding from people about this after our last update.

Game session at Lagunitas!

We helped organize an event last weekend at the Lagunitas Brewing Company that brought together 8 game designers from Chicago to play their games in progress. We brought our two advance copies of Good Dog, Bad Zombie to this event and got a chance to play with some great people - including a couple of backers! Thanks so much to Lagunitas for making this space and community available. Plus, all beer sales went to support the Jack Vasel Memorial Fund!

Good dogs, good times.

So close to winning, but also so close to losing! Everything comes down to this final turn!

Victory! Arooooo!

Your Dogs!

Here’s this update's featured pups!

Marty let us know that Gunner passed away recently, but is still loved dearly <3

@Amber So glad you think it looks awesome. So do we! And regarding shipping address confirmation, yes indeed, good question! You will get an email shortly from Backerkit that will ask you to verify or update your shipping address. (That email hasn't gone out yet! It will sometime within the next week or so).